Post #11

It is difficult to rank these standards, as I find that they are all important and you must have one in order for the others to be successful; however, this is my list:

1.  The number one standard for my 7^th grade ELA students is the standard of “Critical thinking, problem solving, and decision making” is one of the most important pillars of education. ALL students should be able to complete a task using this standard. I actually did an activity in class on Friday that has to do with moral decision making. As we read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, I had to make a connection between the decision Tom and Huck of either helping Muff Potter, but risk their own safety; or allow Muff Potter to take the blame, but stay safe themselves. I gave 4 scenarios that would force a student to make a difficult decision. They had to use reasoning for both sides and come to a consensus about their decision. This was challenging because of the differing personalities and backgrounds of each student. What I could have done is then asked students to create a visual representation of the path they did choose, and the path they did not choose. What were there obstacles, and their overall outcome?
2. I find that the requirement of “Creativity and Innovation” is becoming more and more prevalent in the classroom and real world. Part of the Common Core ELA standards is learning to read instructions/directions correctly and therefore create something from those directions. What I would ask my students to do is read a set of directions to a game they have never seen before, play the game, and make a list of difficulties. I would then ask that the students create their own game. The challenge is creating directions that are easy enough to follow, while the game is not so easy that the player becomes bored too easily.
3. "Communication and Collaboration" is a standard that is applied weekly. However, it is not always via technology. When I do incorporate this standard using a technology tool, I usually use Edmodo, or on one occasion have used Google slides. The assignment was a presentation about the change in fashion in the 1940’s. Each group member was assigned a different aspect, did their research and collaborated through Google slides. Over the weekend they were able to communicate via Google slides and create a presentation without actually having to speak face to face.
4. "Digital Citizenship" is something that most students are unaware of. We can tell someone a million times how to act and the “dos and don’ts” of technology use, but until they either experience it themselves or at least get a good visual representation, it is difficult to teach. I would create a technology based scenario for my students and ask them to solve the problem that “they” have just created. Make the scenario real world enough so that it may seem that it could actually happen to them. The point is to show students what could potentially happen and how difficult it is to solve, or how impossible it is to recover from. Then ask students to come up with preventative solutions to the problem. These scenarios could be social media related-i.e. blogging, facebook, twitter, etc. or it could be something such as how to save a document or downloading from a link online that was seen as a “pop-up”.
5.  We cannot assume that our students (especially my middle school students) know how to operate all technology, therefore we need the standard "Technology Operations and Concepts". Although it may seem like they know everything about an iPad, or a desktop/laptop computer or even the SMARTboard itself… that is not the case. An example of what we did at our school, to ensure students could operate and navigate the PARCC program/platform, is we created a scavenger hunt, then had a pilot “dry run” of the test itself. Each class was required to take time for the scavenger hunt about everything from logging on, to how to scroll down in the story, to how to find the compass. It would seem that this was an easy task, but you would be amazed at how many questions we had to answer when it came time for the pilot “dry-run”. When introducing a new piece of technology into the classroom, allowing time for students to explore is crucial.
6. The standards of “Research and information fluency” becomes more in depth, but just as important in the middle school classroom, just as it is in the elementary and high school classrooms. This is a skill that will follow students for the rest of their lives. Not only being able to research a topic, but finding the correct information, and gathering the most important information, to create a separate piece to share with their peers is vital. Again with the 1940’s, I would have students choose a topic that interests them that is clearly debatable, such as “Should war be broadcast on television?”. Students would need to locate information, organize it, analyze, evaluate and synthesize the information, and finally report on the topic, while forming their own opinion as well.